Skeptic Project

KinGaia, you are correct that the huge number of pets that humans keep indoors are a huge waste of resources and in many cases these days, an abuse of nature.
However, have you considered why people keep pets? If you have a look, I think you'll find just as I have, that in most cases people keep pets for reasons like companionship, protection, having a relationship of unconditional love, or to have control over some other being. All of which are neuroses stemming from the fact these people who keep pets are not properly cared for in this society.

Pets get used as a replacement for friendship with other humans because the influence of the monetary system on people's living conditions has eroded trust and community in western nations to the point that many people living in all these apartments in the cities don't even know their next-door neighbours.
By removing people's fear of being burgled, by them all having access to the hardware they need when they need it from libraries, instead of hoarding junk in their flat, we can remove the root of that problem. Communities can be rebuilt, and people won't be so needlessly lonely anymore.

There is also the control and protection aspect that goes with training dogs. The few people who train dogs because they feel they need to control another being are suffering from a severe psychological disorder resulting from this culture, which could result in them turning to inflicting violence upon other human beings if the dog can't meet their needs, as people like Dr Gilligan have found time and again when investigating the childhood of murderers and rapists.
Once we get rid of irrelevant education and the obligation to earn money for a living, and hence work stress, then those problems will start to disappear.

As for those who take some kind of silly pride in getting their dog to perform 'tricks', and even take them to competitions to show off, well, they are a bit loopy but not so much to worry about.
The people on my street seem to mainly train their dogs in a harsh way so that they have a loyal security guard at their side whenever they want. That again stems from the first problem that I mentioned.

When people no longer need pets, they won't seek them or breed them. If people really want to see animals, they ought to go out into the wild, or to protected enclosures in more dangerous places so that they don't get mauled by lions, just like Jacque suggested building structures in the sea that have underwater sections where people can observe the marine life, instead of the current common practice of confining those creatures in the unnatural setting of an aquarium, where they are then fed with small creatures trawled from the oceans.

You may have a point that we would save a lot of time and resources by euthanising a lot of pets, but that doesn't mean we need to. You can just leave it up to the pet owners themselves, instead of imposing on anyone. As the generation that needs pets fades away, so will their pets. If too many cats do escape out into the wild after their owners are not around to feed them, a lot of them would probably die due to maladjustment from all those centuries of sick social experimentation in useless animal breeding. You could always go and put them out of their misery if you wanted to, and might save a few birds and rabbits in the process, but in this country we still have a few very rare wildcats, which would probably slap the shit out of the domestic ones if many were let loose. This is a pretty tame island now, but as I understand it, the US has all kinds of things that would eat dometic cats once they get released, here it's pretty much just badgers.
You might also note the whole 'stray dometicated animal' behaviour, where they currently hang around human settlements begging for food. While we have some cultural attachment to them in the west, and I've certainly had heartstrings tugged by friendly stray dogs before, they are still no less vermin than the other animals that infest our cities. Once people stop wasting so much food, you'll gradually see the rats, pigeons and seagulls fading away too.

http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_kunena&func=view&catid=5&id=335096&limit=10&limitstart=50&Itemid=100114&lang=en#336771

I guess this idiot missed the part where some of us have pets because we rescue abused and neglected animals to give them a happy life and a good home.

This is the kind of freak that probably tortured small animals by the time he was 9 or 10.

Maybe he's a Vulcan.

Ferengi then?

Not even a Ferengi because he said

"next you will be telling me that money is good"

This guy is more likely a borg.

Wolf Bird> the first time someone tried to explain the whole TZM/RBE idea to me that was all that I could think. It didn't sound nice, it certainly didn't sound utopian. It sounded like a very scary and sad place. A place where no one ever left their little George Jetson houses or their computers. It is life in a void. Fortunately they have no chance.